Patents Examined by Yuqing Xiao
  • Patent number: 11762092
    Abstract: A method of acquiring distance information of an object by using a LiDAR apparatus includes: irradiating a first laser light of a first type toward surroundings of the LiDAR apparatus for a first time period; receiving a first reflected laser light of the first laser light reflected from a first object located around the LiDAR apparatus, by using an optical sensor of the LiDAR apparatus; irradiating a second laser light of a second type, which is different from the first type, toward the surroundings of the LiDAR apparatus for a second time period following the first time period; receiving a second reflected laser light of the second laser light reflected from a second object located around the LiDAR apparatus, by using the optical sensor; and acquiring an image frame including distance information representing a distance between the LiDAR apparatus and the first object and distance information representing a distance between the LiDAR apparatus and the second object, based on the first reflected laser light
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 1, 2020
    Date of Patent: September 19, 2023
    Assignee: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Minsu Hwangbo, Myungsik Kim
  • Patent number: 11762151
    Abstract: [Object] To provide a technology in flash LiDAR applicable to a wide incidence-angle range. [Solution] An optical radar device (100) includes a light emitting unit (110) that diffusively radiates a laser beam, an arrayed light receiving unit (120) that receives the laser beam emitted from the light emitting unit (110) and reflected off an object whose range is to be determined (10), the arrayed light receiving unit (120) including light receiving elements arrayed two-dimensionally, and a telecentric lens (140) disposed between the object whose range is to be determined and the light receiving element.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 1, 2019
    Date of Patent: September 19, 2023
    Assignee: SHARP KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Koji Takahashi, Peter John Roberts
  • Patent number: 11754683
    Abstract: The present disclosure is directed to imaging LiDARs with separate transmit (Tx) and receive (Rx) optical antennas fed by different optical waveguides. This pair of optical antennas can be activated at the same time through a dual-channel optical switch network, with the Tx antenna connected to a laser source and the Rx antenna connected to a receiver. The Tx and Rx antennas can be positioned adjacent to each other, so they point to approximately the same far-field angle. No optical alignment between the Tx and Rx is necessary. This LiDAR configuration, referred to herein as pseudo-monostatic LiDAR, eliminates spurious reflections and increases the dynamic range of the LiDAR.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 4, 2022
    Date of Patent: September 12, 2023
    Assignee: nEYE Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Tae Joon Seok, Ming Chiang A. Wu
  • Patent number: 11754709
    Abstract: An object detection device includes a signal generator configured to generate a drive signal including an identification signal for identifying ultrasonic waves, a transmitter configured to transmit an ultrasonic wave as a probe wave in response to the drive signal, a receiver configured to receive the ultrasonic wave to generate a reception signal, and a determiner configured to analyze frequencies of the reception signal to determine whether the received wave is a reflected wave of the probe wave, thereby detecting an object. The drive signal includes a ramp-up signal generated to be followed by the identification signal and is used to ramp up an amplitude of the probe wave. A frequency of the ramp-up signal is set to include a frequency at which a transmission/reception efficiency is higher than a transmission/reception efficiency at each of a maximum frequency of the identification signal and a minimum frequency of the identification signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 1, 2021
    Date of Patent: September 12, 2023
    Assignee: DENSO CORPORATION
    Inventors: Yu Koyama, Mitsuyasu Matsuura, Satoru Noro, Hideki Otsuka, Tetsuya Aoyama
  • Patent number: 11747471
    Abstract: A monitoring device performs a method of detecting a need for maintenance of an exercise machine comprising a time-of-flight, ToF, sensor. The method comprises obtaining a measurement signal from the ToF sensor at a predefined operating condition of the exercise machine. Based on the measurement signal, the method determines a measured distance between the ToF sensor and a reflective element in the exercise machine. The measured distance has been found to be responsive to accumulation of deposits on the ToF sensor and is thus evaluated by the method to detect a need for cleaning. The method thereby enables preventive maintenance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 16, 2020
    Date of Patent: September 5, 2023
    Assignee: Sony Group Corporation
    Inventors: Anders Linge, Jens Rydberg, Henrik Bengtsson
  • Patent number: 11747480
    Abstract: An automated threat detection and deterrence apparatus includes an imaging device configured to detect a subject in a subject area, a deterrent component including a directed light deterrent, wherein the directed light deterrent includes a first deterrent mode and a second deterrent mode, the directed light deterrent is configured to perform a first deterrent action on the subject when in the first mode, the directed light deterrent is configured to perform a second deterrent action on the subject when in the second mode, and a processor communicatively connected to the imaging device and the deterrent component, wherein the processor is configured to identify the subject as a function of the detection of the subject, determine a behavior descriptor associated with the subject, select one of the first deterrent mode and the second deterrent mode and command the directed light deterrent to perform an action based on the selection.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 18, 2021
    Date of Patent: September 5, 2023
    Assignee: IntelliShot Holdings, Inc.
    Inventors: Steven W. Goldstein, Michael Strauss
  • Patent number: 11747497
    Abstract: The present application provides a seafloor multi-wave seismic source including: a pressure chamber mechanism; a high-voltage pulse generator with four discharge pathways; a thrust mechanism with a thrust rod and a thrust head; four vibrators are evenly distributed around a periphery of the thrust head, and each vibrator is connected with one discharge pathway of the high-voltage pulse generator; a power supply unit to power the seismic source; and a processor, a memory and a program, wherein the program is stored in the memory and configured to be executed by the processor; and the program includes: pulse emission instructions generated by the processor based on user settings and received by the high-voltage pulse generator, for switching on four or any two of the four discharge pathways at the same time, to enable the corresponding vibrators to vibrate to excite seismic waves in compression wave mode or shear wave mode.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 28, 2022
    Date of Patent: September 5, 2023
    Assignee: FIRST INSTITUTE OF OCEANOGRAPHY, MNR
    Inventors: Yanliang Pei, Kai Liu, Mingming Wen, Chenguang Liu, Yifan Huang, Liancheng Zhang, Keping Yan, Baohua Liu
  • Patent number: 11740337
    Abstract: A light detection and ranging (lidar) system may include a transceiver, a first device including a laser source configured to generate a beam, and one or more optical components, a second device including one or more analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), and a processor configured to alternately turn on the first device and turn on the transceiver. The first device may be configured to generate, based on the beam, an optical signal associated with a local oscillator (LO) signal. The transceiver may be configured to transmit the optical signal to an environment, in response to transmitting the optical signal, receive a returned optical signal that is reflected from an object in the environment, and pair the returned optical signal with the LO signal to generate an electrical signal. The second device may be configured to generate, based on the electrical signal, a digital signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 15, 2022
    Date of Patent: August 29, 2023
    Assignee: Aurora Operations, Inc.
    Inventors: Zeb William Barber, Stefan Heineman, Randy Ray Reibel
  • Patent number: 11740336
    Abstract: A light detection and ranging (LIDAR) transceiver includes optical antenna arrays and an optical switch. Some of the optical antenna arrays include a number of optical antennas and an optical splitter coupled to the optical antennas. The optical splitter may include a number of passive optical splitters. The optical splitter provides a portion of an input signal to the optical antennas. The optical switch is configured to selectively provide the input signal to at least one of the plurality of optical antenna arrays. The optical switch enables addressable field of view scanning by selectively providing the input signal to the plurality of antenna arrays, one array at a time.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 21, 2021
    Date of Patent: August 29, 2023
    Assignee: OURS TECHNOLOGY, LLC
    Inventors: Sen Lin, Andrew Steil Michaels
  • Patent number: 11733381
    Abstract: A sound velocity profile inversion method based on an inverted multi-beam echometer.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 16, 2021
    Date of Patent: August 22, 2023
    Assignee: ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY
    Inventors: Liling Jin, Wen Xu
  • Patent number: 11733387
    Abstract: Disclosed herein are examples of ladar systems and methods where data about a plurality of ladar returns from prior ladar pulse shots gets stored in a spatial index that associates ladar return data with corresponding locations in a coordinate space to which the ladar return data pertain. This spatial index can then be accessed by a processor to retrieve ladar return data for locations in the coordinate space that are near a range point to be targeted by the ladar system with a new ladar pulse shot. This nearby prior ladar return data can then be analyzed by the ladar system to help define a control parameter for use by the ladar receiver with respect to the new ladar pulse shot.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 18, 2019
    Date of Patent: August 22, 2023
    Assignee: AEYE, Inc.
    Inventors: Luis Carlos Dussan, Allan Steinhardt, Federico Presutti, Joel David Benscoter
  • Patent number: 11733355
    Abstract: An optical sensor module for time-of-flight measurement comprises an optical emitter, a main detector and a reference detector which are arranged in or on a carrier. An opaque housing of the optical sensor module has a first chamber and a second chamber which are separated by a light barrier. The housing has a cover section and is arranged on the carrier such that the optical emitter is located inside the first chamber, the main detector is located inside the second chamber and the reference detector is located outside the first chamber. Furthermore, a main surface of the cover section is positioned opposite the carrier. The optical emitter is arranged and configured to emit light through a first aperture in the cover section, and the main detector is arranged and configured to detect light entering the second chamber through a second aperture in the cover section.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 24, 2017
    Date of Patent: August 22, 2023
    Assignee: AMS AG
    Inventors: Robert Kappel, Mario Manninger, Todd Bishop
  • Patent number: 11733361
    Abstract: A light detection and ranging (LIDAR) apparatus includes optical source configured to emit a laser beam in a first direction, a polarization wave plate configured to transform polarization state of the laser beam headed in the first direction toward a target environment, and a reflective optical component to return a portion of the laser beam toward the optical source along a return path and through the polarization wave plate as a local oscillator signal. A polarization selective component to separate light in the return path based on the optical polarization, wherein the polarization selective component refracts orthogonally polarized light along the return path to a divergent path, wherein the polarization selective component is further configured to enable interference between the local oscillator signal and the target signal to generate a combined signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2018
    Date of Patent: August 22, 2023
    Assignee: Aeva, Inc.
    Inventors: Omer P. Kocaoglu, Neal N. Oza, Keith Gagne, Mina Rezk
  • Patent number: 11726189
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to calibrating an imaging and ranging subsystem. Sensor data indicative of one or more targets from the imaging and ranging subsystem, location data defining a geographical location of the imaging and ranging subsystem, orientation data defining an orientation of the imaging and ranging subsystem and stored translation and rotation values of the imaging and ranging subsystem are received. Estimated Doppler values for the target are provided by the sensor data and theoretical Doppler values for the targets are also calculated. The estimated Doppler values are compared to the theoretical Doppler values to determine if calibration of the imaging and ranging subsystem is required. If calibration is necessary, correction translation and correction rotation values are calculated in order to calculate updated translation and rotation values used to calibrate the imaging and ranging subsystem.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 9, 2019
    Date of Patent: August 15, 2023
    Assignee: NIO Technology (Anhui) Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Zhenxiang Jian, Tong Lin, Hiu Hong Yu, Xu Chen
  • Patent number: 11725938
    Abstract: Reselection of an instrument point, due to the limited emission range of a scanning laser light, is performed with decreased burden. A total station equipped with a laser scanner has a combined structure of a total station and a laser scanner. The total station equipped with the laser scanner includes a point cloud data acquiring unit, a distance acquiring unit, and an instrument point calculator. The point cloud data acquiring unit acquires point cloud data that is obtained through laser scanning performed by the laser scanner set up at a first instrument point. The distance acquiring unit acquires a distance to the laser scanner of each point in the point cloud data. The instrument point calculator calculates a location of a second instrument point on the basis of an upper limit of the distance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 1, 2020
    Date of Patent: August 15, 2023
    Assignee: Topcon Corporation
    Inventor: You Sasaki
  • Patent number: 11719796
    Abstract: The present disclosure provides a system and method for removing noise from an ultrasonic signal using a generative adversarial network (GAN). The present disclosure provides three input formats for the neural network (NN) in order to feed one-dimensional (1D) input data to the network. The system is generalizable to multiple noise sources, as it learns from different motion functions and noise types. The end-to-end system of the present disclosure is trained on raw ultrasonic signals with very little pre-processing or feature extraction.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 31, 2020
    Date of Patent: August 8, 2023
    Assignee: Volvo Car Corporation
    Inventors: Ying Li, Usha Nookala, Sihao Ding
  • Patent number: 11719816
    Abstract: A light detection and ranging (LiDAR) device comprising: a laser emitting chip configured to emit laser, a laser detecting chip configured to detect laser, an emitting optic module configured to guide laser generated from the laser emitting chip to the outside of the LiDAR device, a detecting optic module configured to guide laser received from the outside of the LiDAR device to the laser detecting chip, an emitting optic holder located between the laser emitting chip and the emitting optic module, and an at least one emitting optic fixer located between the emitting optic holder and the emitting optic module, wherein the at least one emitting optic fixer is configured to fix a relative position between the laser emitting chip and the emitting optic module.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 16, 2022
    Date of Patent: August 8, 2023
    Assignee: SOS LAB Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Bumsik Won, Suwoo Noh, Gyeonghwan Shin
  • Patent number: 11714179
    Abstract: Disclosed is an electronic device that includes a display, a communication module, at least one microphone, at least one speaker, a processor operatively coupled to the display, the communication module, the microphone, and the speaker, and a memory operatively coupled to the processor. The memory may store instructions, when executed, causing the processor to transmit, through the speaker, a first audio sound including first information, receive, through the microphone, a second audio sound including second information responding to the first information from a first external electronic device, transmit, through the speaker, a third audio sound including third information for acquiring a distance to the first external electronic device after receiving the second audio sound, and receive, through the microphone, a fourth audio sound including fourth information responding to the third information from the first external electronic device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 26, 2019
    Date of Patent: August 1, 2023
    Inventors: Walyong Cho, Kyungmin Park
  • Patent number: 11714193
    Abstract: One variation of a method for registering distance scan data includes: accessing a first distance scan recorded, at a first time, by a first depth sensor defining a first field of view; accessing a second distance scan recorded, at approximately the first time, by a second depth sensor defining a second field of view overlapping a portion of the first field of view; calculating a first set of lines represented by points in a first portion of the first distance scan overlapping a second portion of the second distance scan; calculating a second set of lines represented by points in the second portion of the second distance scan; calculating skew distances between each pair of corresponding lines in the first and second sets of lines; and calculating an alignment transformation that aligns the first distance scan and the second distance scan to minimize skew distances between corresponding pairs of lines.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 19, 2018
    Date of Patent: August 1, 2023
    Inventors: Paul Foster, Joel Pazhayampallil, Lei Liu
  • Patent number: 11709285
    Abstract: A method for seismic surveying includes deploying a first seismic energy source at a plurality of locations along a source line. Locations are determined by, (i) setting a shot point at one end of the line, setting a minimum distance between shot points and setting a nominal shot point interval being greater than a Nyquist maximum spacing at a maximum spatial frequency to be evaluated in the subsurface area, (ii) calculating a maximum distance between shot points as a difference between twice the nominal shot point interval and the minimum distance, (iii) dividing a span between the maximum distance and the minimum distance into equally spaced samples, and choosing at random one of the equally spaced samples to calculate a shot point subsequent to the initial shot point; and (iv) setting the calculated shot point as the initial shot point and repeating (ii) and (iii) until the subsequent calculated shot point is within a predetermined distance of an opposed end of the first source line.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 8, 2022
    Date of Patent: July 25, 2023
    Assignee: ACTeQ LLC
    Inventor: David Monk